


Affection

by mystery_deer



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, though neither of them hurt each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 13:57:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21411298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystery_deer/pseuds/mystery_deer
Summary: Raymond and Kevin don't understand why their love is considered cold
Relationships: Kevin Cozner/Ray Holt
Comments: 6
Kudos: 193





	1. Love

Raymond didn’t understand at all why people thought he and his boyfriend were cold and unfeeling towards each other. He felt some days that he did nothing BUT feel for Kevin. Stumbling down the street in a lovedrunk haze made stronger by the fact that they were finally living together. Finally occupying the same space, their shared presence always there even when their physical counterparts weren’t. It felt like being together all the time and it was intoxicating, he was sure it showed plainly, that he reeked of it.

Kevin told him when Raymond asked, exasperated, (because he and Raymond had been to a party and Raymond, after rebuffing the advances of a man by saying he had a partner was given a look of pure confusion. "Who?" He'd asked, even though Kevin had been standing next to him the entire night.) that people thought so because they were not affectionate in public. When Raymond asked what that meant (surely it was plain to anyone that they were in love? Surely it was written all over their faces, all over their bodies and in the margins of every word they said to each other?)

“When people speak of affection they usually categorize it as physical affection. Holding hands, embracing, kissing. Though I’ve had a friend who found it odd that we don’t call each other pet names.”

He balched at this. “They expect me to call you pet names in front of other people?”

“Yes.” Kevin said in a tone that indicated he was as perturbed by this notion as his boyfriend. There was a meaningful pause as the information set in. “Please don’t take this conversation as a hint of some sort.” He cautioned.

“I will not, thank you for enlightening me.”  
“It was no trouble.”

He thought about it. He thought about holding Kevin’s hand while walking down the street, wrapping their arms around each other and kissing, calling each other by their pet names when they saw each other.

He began to notice other people as well. Girls walking arm in arm, couples waiting in line at the grocery store giggling and kissing quietly, their friends who called out to partners with a wave and a “Honey! Honey over here!”

He could not imagine doing so. Then again, he had never been accused of being affectionate. 

He hardly ever hugged his sister, would stand there and accept her arms around him (one of his earliest memories was of detangling himself and her toddler face, shocked and then crying. It broke his heart.) but he built her fortresses and sang the songs he loved to her, delighted when she laughed. When she smiled. 

She knew how much he loved her. She knew so surely that she teased him about it, that even his denials could not shake her.

So why?

Why had his first boyfriend broken up with him, red-faced and growling that “I don’t think you actually like me so why don’t we just stop this now?”

Why had his fourth stopped responding to his texts when he refused to kiss him after they had seen a movie (popcorn breathe, germs, the crowds were noisy and overwhelming). "Why didn't you want to kiss him?" Asked every friend he told the story to and even though they called him a jerk and a moron, said he should have just talked to Raymond, they placed that small bit of blame on him and he didn't know how to explain. He didn't know how to say that he would gladly kiss him, he would have loved to kiss him after they'd gotten home and comfortable. Why was it so imperative that they kiss right then? Why was it something worth severing over?

Why did people playfully (painfully) ask if he and Kevin were really dating?  
“You certainly don’t act like it!”

Was he not doing it right? Was it not enough?  
He remembered his uncle singing in the kitchen, "Thin love ain't no love at all" He'd croon, voice adopting a country twang. "No, thin love ain't no love at all."  
Was his love thin? Then why was he drowning in it? Why did the words catch in his throat, his heart skip beats, his lips quirk into a smile without his knowledge if what he felt for Kevin, for his friends, for his sister and mother and the entire damn world sometimes was not enough to hold everything together? 

After weeks of thinking in circles he had wrapped his arms around Kevin in the comfort of their own home and asked him if he was satisfied with their relationship.

“I’m more than satisfied. I couldn’t be happier. Is something bothering you?” He was always good at cajoling him. And so everything came pouring out into the air around them and Kevin with his handsome, precise fingers plucked out the parts that mattered and addressed them in the way he did. There was something about it that was so particular to Kevin Cozner and no one else in the world could replicate it. If he were a more romantic minded man he would dedicate pages of prose to uncovering this quality but as such the mystery was charming.

Kevin spoke like a poet, even if he was not aware of it.

“Raymond, do you remember Constance’s birthday party?”  
“Yes.” Constance was a woman Raymond worked with. She was the mailroom technician and they often complained about their colleagues' sexism and racism respectively. They also talked a great deal about birdwatching. 

“You got her a gift, a stapler. Because you often heard her struggling with the one at her desk. She never mentioned it but nonetheless you recognized the need.”

Raymond snorted. “Well that was just considerate gift giving. Constance is a dear friend.”

“Yes, but most people don’t know their friends enough to give them things like that. Things they really need and want.” 

Raymond could not imagine this being the case. If you were friends with someone how could you not know?

“You changed which side of the bed you sleep on for me.”  
“I did?”  
“Yes, you did. When we began living together you changed because you knew I didn’t like to be closed in on the side with the wall. I fell in love with you then and I keep falling in love with you because of all the small unconscious deeply considerate things you do every day.”

Kevin leaned back and kissed his boyfriend’s cheek.  
“I love you, Raymond.”

“I love you as well.” Raymond said, dizzy with feeling.

Kevin told him later on when they were both in bed, that there was nothing wrong with Raymond.  
"I thought you might be berating yourself for or worrying over something." He correctly deduced. "And today it became clear that it was about showing affection."  
"I don't know that I will ever be able to hold you Kevin." He admitted. "That I will ever be able to kiss you in front of the golden gate bridge."

Kevin did not understand why his boyfriend had chosen the golden gate bridge as the pinnacle of romance but he wrapped his arms around him, rested his head against his.  
"You're holding me now."  
"Kevin..."  
"And I am holding you. Today we have kissed numerous times, held hands under the table during lunch and you've told me you loved me on eight occasions since I woke up this morning."  
"But not in front of people."  
"I don't care about other people." Kevin declared in a way that reminded Raymond of a swashbuckler. "Damn them." When Raymond laughed he repeated the sentiment with more feeling. "Damn them all!"

And so the world was damned. All but two and in the vast void left over by the absence of everyone else they built. They built castles and archways and stone paths and ornate paintings and songs and ancient relics and towns and cities and oceans. Everything, everything made by love.


	2. Honey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kevin ruminates on his love and Raymond, of course Raymond.

Kevin had grown up selfish with love.

He hid his love in desk drawers, in the margins of books, in innocent looks past the object of it. He hid it by talking over it, by actively hating it.  
The things he loved were not normal, not natural for a boy. He received this message clearly in his youth. So clearly in fact that he could not remember an occasion where he had ever openly showed a true liking for something. He pretended, yes. He pretended many things in order to protect himself, at an age where he did not truly understand what he was protecting himself from. 

He supposed that to love something was necessarily to hide it from the world. To be passionate was foolish, that was what he was told. "The great geniuses of our time Kevin," his father told him, voice flat after receiving the news that his son had skipped piano lessons. "Did not LOVE what they did. They mastered it." 

So he had grown up mastering a great many things. Piano, flute, calligraphy, origami, every subject to the best of his ability. And in between his mastery of things he gorged himself on love. He read the old romantics and poets, ingested ballads and odes and forgotten letters in forgotten languages until he felt sick enough to stave it off another few days.

When he met Raymond he knew right away that he was in love.  
Because he felt a pain in his stomach that bloomed the moment they parted, the second he had time to digest what had happened.

This is love, his body cried. This is love and it is poison.

Perhaps he had built up a tolerance after years of binging because he called Raymond as soon as he got home to tell him he got home and that he enjoyed their date and would enjoy it even more if there was a second one.

When Raymond asked him why people thought they were not affectionate he told him and felt the familiar ache. Which was strange.

He had noticed the ache had begun to flare up not after Raymond did something that made him love him (or else surely he would be in the hospital or dead by now, everything Raymond did made him love him) but when someone else pointed out that love and questioned it. When they made it feel like less than it was through their assessment.

“Thank you for enlightening me.”  
“It was no trouble.”

He hoped that Raymond didn’t ache. That he wouldn’t take their discussion as an admission of lack because there was no lack to admit, whatever anyone else said.

When Raymond asked if their relationship was satisfactory Kevin realized what the ache was. When he had first felt it.

It had been when he was young, so young he couldn't recall his own age and his mother had bent down to smile at him.   
“Aren’t you too old to be reading that?” She’d asked, kind as anything.

The ache had begun then and returned a few nights later when he’d read the same book under his bed by flashlight.   
A dozen other instances sprang to mind at once.  
"Kevin why don't you go outside every once in awhile?"  
"This is not a love story, Cozner. It's between two men. You're a very bright student but It's obvious you didn't understand..."  
"Oh, do you uh...like? Poetry?"  
"Kevin, try to challenge yourself and stop folding all these paper cranes."  
"God, you're such a f-"

It was not love, he realized. It was never love that hurt him but the secrecy that he had been forced to love in.

But he did not love Raymond secretly. He did not hide him away, ignore him until all prying eyes had vanished. He loved him brazenly, utterly and wholly and the very thought that others thought he was ashamed, that he was hiding, was painful.

It was the most painful thing he’d ever felt. 

And he hoped Raymond never had to feel that.

“I love you, Raymond.” He told him, hoping that this would be enough.  
“I love you as well.” He replied, and he knew it was.

Though perhaps to the world they seemed cold, as long as they could feel the warmth between them it was alright. It was alright because the only people they needed to prove their love to were each other and it was proven every single day they spent together. Even though every once in awhile they were both perplexed and annoyed that in the middle of the fire they felt between them, no one noticed the flames held within every look, gesture and monotone “I love you.”


End file.
